Thinking of training for a career in nursing?

“Running a successful adult learning programme is all about taking a non-judgemental view, because this is not about the qualifications they’ve got, but about their potential,” says Jerry Masterson, practice learning facilitator at Leeds Teaching Hospital’s NHS Trust. Jerry recruits staff onto the OU’s pre-registration nursing programme and explains how students are given the support they need to succeed and how he sees, first hand, the OU changing people’s lives. “I’m a believer!” he says…

“My job is all about helping staff to fulfil their potential. I am the employer representative on the Open University’s pre-registration nursing programme, which our Trust has been running since 2006, and I recruit students and ensure they get the best support they can to succeed.

“I recruit staff onto the programme by advertising and interviewing them. Many left school with few qualifications for a number of reasons. We talk to applicants about their commitment and make sure they have thought it through. If we or they don’t feel they’re ready academically, that’s not a problem – we create for them an action programme which will help them get up to Key skills level 2. This is a good way for them to prove their commitment and of course it makes them better prepared – and if they go into the programme with their eyes open about what is expected of them, they are much more likely to be able to see it through to the end.

“The Strategic Health Authority pays for the students to study 26 hours a week for the four-year duration of the course. They are assigned a tutor and for the first three months from September to December much of this is paid study leave, so they will be at home developing their study skills. However, in the New Year it becomes much more clinical and much of their study time is spent in practice on a ward. Of course, most of the people on pre-registration nursing courses are already healthcare support workers so they are in familiar surroundings.

“We have 48 students on the course at the moment but because they do come into it so well prepared we only get about one problem student a year. When they’ve completed the course they can register as an adult nurse and apply for qualified nursing status. We can’t guarantee them a job on the ward they trained on but we find that, like in most degree programmes, they tend to specialise as they continue so their fields of interest change.

“The Open University is an excellent way to learn. I’m a believer! My dad could remember the birth of the OU in the 1960s and talked about its optimism and idealism, and I fully believe in that. There are so many people in middle age who are victims of the old 11-plus and the school system, who weren’t given the opportunity to learn, do exams and fulfil their potential. But the OU gave them those opportunities, made them realise they really could achieve great things and made them believe in themselves.”

 

Find out more: 

• Pre-registration nursing programme
• Nursing qualifications
• Faculty of Health and Social Care